Children’s Hunger Relief Fund has committed to helping hungry children and hopeless families for the past 38 years, and that’s just what we’ve done together with our donors’ help. This year, as our International Emergency Relief Team traveled to Jordan and the Syrian Region to help desperate and traumatized Syrian refugees, we continue fulfilling that pledge and our mission.

Only weeks ago our CHRF Emergency Relief Director traveled with his team, volunteering to go into harm’s way in order to help these innocent victims in their desperate situation.

After consulting on the ground with the United Nations Human Rights Council, our team set out to find refugees that NO OTHER relief agencies have helped.

Jordan is now home to the second largest refugee camp in the world with a population of over 130,000 people. With this much confusion and disorder going on in the region terrible things can happen, as our team leader reveals in his report from the ground:

No matter how many times I walk into such camps, I am never prepared for what I see and experience. How can anyone get used to this?

Three Syrian refugee families must share this small room. This man’s wife and brother died when their home was hit by a rocket.

As I speak to people, I hear stories of theft, violence and rape, the gangs roaming around, women and young girls are not safe. This is a dangerous place. It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for many of these people and their families.

This camp is already receiving help from other NGOs but there are many thousands of refugees that don’t want to take shelter in these camps and put their children at risk of being raped or harmed. As a husband and father, I know I would not want my family to be in a situation where I couldn’t protect them.

We leave the refugee camps where theft and attacks on women and children are numerous and look for the families that have fled for the safety of their children and are trying to survive outside of the refugee camps. These are the families that we came to assist, those that need our help the most, those that aren’t getting help from anyone else.

Families must flee the refugee camps where innocent children like this boy are not safe.

Walking into a room, we find a mother with her four children, sitting on a concrete floor. There is no furniture, hardly any possessions at all. When you have to run for your life at a moment’s notice, all you can grab is your children.

The mother tells us about her village being bombed and destroyed. She has no job, no way of providing for her family. There is no “home.” Knowing she will be here a long time, she is worried about her children’s education. When I ask her where her husband is, tears well up in her eyes. She has no idea.

This family is deeply traumatized, they have lost everything, including their husband and father.

We meet another mother with five children. They are living in what looks like a garage, I can tell she is sick. Every word she speaks is filled with fear and desperation. She too has no idea what happened to her husband.

What strikes me about these families is that they are dignified and educated, people that had homes and jobs and did the things that most American people would do as a family. They want to work, they want their children to be healthy, educated and safe.

I listen, story after horrific story, mass executions, decapitated heads and limbs left outside their homes, villages bombed, the sounds of terrorized people running and screaming, women and little girls being raped, men and boys being tortured. With each story, my nausea spreads. With each story, the agony and sorrow I feel for these people intensifies. This is why we are here, to help these vulnerable and innocent people. To extend your love and generosity to them.

A number of men show me their scars from electrical shocks and beatings, broken bones, shrapnel wounds. These men are injured and traumatized but fortunate. They are alive.

These children, with their family, were caught up in an attack and forced to flee. They are traumatized by what they have seen, they cannot sleep according to their father, kept up by reliving the nightmare of seeing their friends and people killed.

Children are innocent, precious and special. As a father, I cannot imagine my children going through such horror and trauma, being caught up in a war, witnessing death, losing family members and fleeing for their lives to live as a refugee in another country.

Children are innocent, precious and special.

One father takes me into his home outside of the village and hands me a cup of tea, sits down beside me, and says, “Listen. And I hear it.”

Thud after thud, explosion after explosion, I sit and listen to the bombs falling. With each thud comes that sound that hangs in the air after an explosion. Imagine what these people are experiencing right now. The injuries. The death. The traumas caused by these attacks. I feel sick.

The facts cannot be ignored:

Over 100, 000 people have died in this war

Two million have been displaced

More than one million refugees are children

We can’t just go home and go back to heartlessly and mindlessly watching this tragedy on the news. We cannot turn and ignore what is happening to these people. I don’t want to go home and simply share “the news” with you and others. We need to represent these families, to tell the truth of their story, and to do what we can to help these people.

More than one million children are refugees. This family of nine lives under this shelter made out of blankets.

And we ARE HELPING these families THANKS to our great team of DONORS like YOU. We are helping feed families in Syria and supplying them with emergency relief packages full of supplies that they must have in order to survive.

Without good people like our CHRF supporters we would never be able to help these people who are NOT getting ANY help from ANY OTHER relief agency.

Next month the Children’s Hunger Relief Fund team plans to return to help these innocent families that have been stripped of everything but their lives. Mothers who have lost their husbands and must somehow provide for their children alone. Children who have lost both their parents and are alone, lost, hungry and scared.

Thank you for your help to little boys like this precious one who is happily sitting on food and supplies for his family! You have provided them with HOPE!

One Response to SYRIA: How We Are Helping Together

Very clear and focused report on how you guys are getting the job done. Whatever any of us think about the politics and governments involved in all this strife, this story reminds us there are women and children being caught in the cross fire and you have stepped into the humanitarian crisis with a care and food. It’s Feels good to be part of your “team”.